eBay

speedracer1 · ‎02-25-2015

As long as I can remember .. There was a "button" about 1/3 of the way down the listing (just above the description, on the right side) that allowed you to choose one of 3 options for printing out your item listing.

I always printed out a copy of the listing and included it in the package with the item. Today I went to do the same thing and the "Print" button was gone. Why ? This tool is of GREAT use. I used it for EVERY sale I made. I called eBay customer service and they had no answer. The only suggestion was to do use the "Print Screen" option on my computer. This isn't as good as the eBay Print Listing because it includes info that isn't useful to the buyer and it doesn't leave the proper space I used to mark the item Paid In Full and a Thank You for your purchase note.

How can I / we let eBay know how important this button was ? Any suggestions ?

Thanks in Advance,

kurtrobaer · ‎04-23-2016

@berserkerplanet wrote:
@flwrcrt wrote:
I copied your bookmarklet and pasted it in the URL of a new bookmark, and replaced "&colon;" with ":" as directed. I can't seem to get this to work in either Firefox or Internet Explorer10, in the U.S. version of ebay. Did I do something wrong? The URL I have bookmarked is as follows - javascript&colon;window.location.href=JSON.parse('"'+document.documentElement.textContent.match(new%20RegExp('"updateURL":"(.*?)"'))[1]+'&viewItem&rt=nc&print=all"')
Don't know if kurtrobaer (the bookmarklet poster) is around after 3 months, but I took a look at it. It does work if what you are trying to get to is the listing summary page that shows all the photos (but may skimp on some of the other listing details).

Here is what the bookmarklet should look like:

Yup, still around 😉

@flwrcrt wrote:
eBay started embedding the description portion of the listing pages in a frame a while back which bollixes up printing (Firefox print only grabs beginning portion of frame content), and haven't figured out how to access the photos yet. IF I ever do come up with something it will likely require a Greasemonkey script (but might be doable as a bookmarklet)

PDFCreator permits collection of multiple docs to print to a single pdf file. My current workaround is to print the listing page to pdf in "Wait/Collect" mode, then right click on the description area in the listing and use the Firefox This Frame->Print frame feature to add the full description to the pdf print queue. Hit Ctrl-A to combine the 2, Ctrl-P to finalize the pdf print. (note that the summary page could also be added into the document the same way - I just don't add it in there since it comes up earlier in my print flow).
The result of the above kludge isn't a single pretty page, but all the info I need gets captured this way: full description, all the photos, and a view of the listing page details (price dates, buyer id, etc) The shipping&payments tab isn't there but could also be grabbed as another print added to the queue if it is also needed.

Doesn't that depend on the kind of html-markup the seller has used in the description, thus not really eBay's fault?

Because almost all items I see have no problems on the print page at all, even with very long descriptions.

But, very rarely, I indeed do come across some rediculus long and high fixed sized frames for the summery though.

Either way, I really recommend you take a look at the Print Edit addon for Firefox. With that you can easily edit the page in print preview and, for example, remove all unneeded cluttter (read: ads), or change such messed up frames. It's very intuitive and strait-forward to use (eg: select the item/block you don't want and hit <DEL>, or select what you do want and click on "remove all, except" button)...

And for saving a listing, instead of using PDFcreator to save them as an uneditable PDF (well, you could edit it, but you'll loose all the original html and pictures get compressed), I always save them as a complete stand-alone single MHT-file (MSIE-compatible) using the Mozilla Archive Format addon. In that way you can always change the pages later for whatever reason, or print portions of them.

😉

berserkerplanet · ‎04-25-2016

>> Yup, still around 😉

Good.

>> >>eBay started embedding the description portion of the listing pages in a frame a while back which

>> >>bollixes up printing (Firefox print only grabs beginning portion of frame content), and haven't....

>>Doesn't that depend on the kind of html-markup the seller has used in the description, thus not
>>really eBay's fault? Because almost all items I see have no problems on the print page at all, even
>>with very long descriptions. But, very rarely, I indeed do come across some rediculus long and high
>>fixed sized frames for the summery though.

If by print page you mean the summary page then we are talking past each other here - the frame issue I'm focused on is on the actual listing page (because the summary page does not contain complete listing info although it has most of it and does show the photos correctly in a usable fashion)

The following is a Firebug snapshot from the actual listing page of one of my listings (I use very simple hand written html):

See the embedded iframe? That is the portion of the page that's the item description. It's been like this for quite a while, happens for all listings I've checked (mine, other sellers', with or without store templates, etc), print fail is the same for all, and same in Firefox 3.6.24 (my default workhorse) and in FF11 and FF40 when I checked.

Tried to correct it with CSS, and still playing with that, but in all cases the result is that no matter how long a listing page is, a listing prints to 2 or 3 pages where:

the top of the listing page prints on page 1 and breaks off with last portion being the "Description" and "Shipping and payments" tabs and "Report item" link line.
Page 2 starts with "eBay item number: xxxxxxxxxxxx" and "Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing." info, followed by the item specifics block, and then only as much of the item description as fits on that page. The remainder of any description is gone.
Page 3 (or rest of page 2 if a very short description) is rating and review (if any) and eBay page footer stuff.

Found some talk of bugs in Firefox way back when with exactly this issue of not printing entire frames, but bugs were supposedly fixed a decade ago and should not be present in FF11 or FF40 (or even 3.6 IIRC).

>>Either way, I really recommend you take a look at the Print Edit addon for Firefox. With that you can easily edit...

Was not familiar with this one, but this type of addon is right up my alley (which is part of the reason I'm sticking with FF3.6.24 as long as I can - 70+ addons installed, about 50 of which are cookie, header, user agent, inline editor, data massaging, profiling, etc addons installed - some of which are way long abandoned and some modded by me, and too much work to upgrade)

Since I'm staying at FF3.6.24, I'm stuck using a quite old version or Print Edit. I installed it and played with it a bit. Looks like some nice features, but don't like what/how it prints PDF's (and don't know if I will waste time hacking it to produce what I want), I don't think it can print multiple documents to a PDF (as I do with PDFCreator), and the removal features I already have covered with the Nuke-Anything-Advanced addon. The text only, etc menu driven modes might be of some use though.

In any case, it doesn't fix anything relating to the partial frame print problem.

>>And for saving a listing, instead of using PDFcreator to save them as an uneditable PDF (well, you
>>could edit it, but you'll loose all the original html and pictures get compressed), I always save them
>>as a complete stand-alone single MHT-file (MSIE-compatible) using the Mozilla Archive Format addon.
>>In that way you can always change the pages later for whatever reason, or print portions of them. 😉

Interesting. However, I NEVER use IE for anything unless absolutely forced to or if testing general compatibility (been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.3?), I'm kinda stuck in a jpg/gif/pdf save mode, and really have no need to edit the saves - they are for archival purposes (although on rare occasion it might be nice to be able to extract native info for relists, or transfer or whatever.)

Anyway, the description iframe not printing entirely issue remains.

You don't see the description encapsulated in an iframe in whatever browser you use?

kurtrobaer · ‎04-26-2016

@berserkerplanet wrote:

If by print page you mean the summary page then we are talking past each other here - the frame issue I'm focused on is on the actual listing page (because the summary page does not contain complete listing info although it has most of it and does show the photos correctly in a usable fashion)

Yep, sorry, I was talking about the print page, but the same goes for the actual listing page: no troubles with printing that completely like you described.

Just now, I tried several listings (long ones, short ones, with fixed sized pictures in it, etc)... no troubles, except that I sometimes need to set the zoom level relativly small to see all of it (as in: some stuff gets cuts off on the right hand side of the page).

Can you give an example of such items you have problems with? Because I'm unable to reproduce the kind of faults you experience with any item I tried.

I do use the latest Firefox version (45.0.2) though, although a bit reluctantly because of their new addon policy.

Note: I have never noticed any info missing on the print page compared to the actual listing page though (if you tick all the boxes on top of the print page).

Can you also give an example item? As I'm interersted to see what is actually missing... To make sure I didn't miss out on some of my current saved/archived listings.

@berserkerplanet wrote:

>>Either way, I really recommend you take a look at the Print Edit addon for Firefox. With that you can easily edit...

Was not familiar with this one, but this type of addon is right up my alley (which is part of the reason I'm sticking with FF3.6.24 as long as I can - 70+ addons installed, about 50 of which are cookie, header, user agent, inline editor, data massaging, profiling, etc addons installed - some of which are way long abandoned and some modded by me, and too much work to upgrade)

Since I'm staying at FF3.6.24, I'm stuck using a quite old version or Print Edit. I installed it and played with it a bit. Looks like some nice features, but don't like what/how it prints PDF's (and don't know if I will waste time hacking it to produce what I want), I don't think it can print multiple documents to a PDF (as I do with PDFCreator), and the removal features I already have covered with the Nuke-Anything-Advanced addon. The text only, etc menu driven modes might be of some use though.

In any case, it doesn't fix anything relating to the partial frame print problem.

>>And for saving a listing, instead of using PDFcreator to save them as an uneditable PDF (well, you
>>could edit it, but you'll loose all the original html and pictures get compressed), I always save them
>>as a complete stand-alone single MHT-file (MSIE-compatible) using the Mozilla Archive Format addon.
>>In that way you can always change the pages later for whatever reason, or print portions of them. 😉

Interesting. However, I NEVER use IE for anything unless absolutely forced to or if testing general compatibility (been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.3?), I'm kinda stuck in a jpg/gif/pdf save mode, and really have no need to edit the saves - they are for archival purposes (although on rare occasion it might be nice to be able to extract native info for relists, or transfer or whatever.)

I don't use 'Print Edit' to print to PDF myself, so I can't judge it's functionality. I also use PDFcreator for that 😉

As for Mozilla Archive Format: The MHTML-file format, although 'invented' by MS and thus also used in MSIE is 'universal'. I don't use MSIE either, but using that file format allows you to save a complete webpage (including everything) into 1 single file... external links to pictures and what not are also automatically updated to local links. The result is that everything is archived in 1 file (instead of a bunch of loose directories and files). What I mean is, although I don't use PKZIP anymore (DOS days are long gone :-P) or not even WinZip, I do use the ZIP-file format quite a lot as it is universal and nativly supported in all kinds of OS's (more so than RAR).

berserkerplanet · ‎04-26-2016

@kurtrobaer wrote:
I don't use 'Print Edit' to print to PDF myself, so I can't judge it's functionality. I also use PDFcreator for that 😉
As for Mozilla Archive Format: The MHTML-file format, although 'invented' by MS and thus also used in MSIE is 'universal'. I don't use MSIE either, but using that file format allows you to save a complete webpage (including everything) into 1 single file... external links to pictures and what not are also automatically updated to local links. The result is that everything is archived in 1 file (instead of a bunch of loose directories and files). What I mean is, although I don't use PKZIP anymore (DOS days are long gone :-P) or not even WinZip, I do use the ZIP-file format quite a lot as it is universal and nativly supported in all kinds of OS's (more so than RAR).

Will continue to play with Print Edit and see if it's worth the memory/performance hit (I know it's not much, but with 70+ addons, every little bit matters), and maybe the MHTML format bears a re-examination since it appears to provide a web save "easy button" approach)

>> (DOS days are long gone :-P)

That's crazy talk. I don't use a DOS OS anymore - although I did boot a motherboard up under DOS 5.0 a couple of weeks ago for testing and it really sucked. Can't believe I reveled in it back in the day. (was way better than IBM 026 punch card computing)

I do however still use XP Pro, along with using batch, console, Autohotkey Scripts, and DOS based 16bit utilities (including those I wrote back in the 80's and 90's in basic, C, and 80xxx assembly) almost daily.

DOS ain't dead 'til the day there isn't even an emulator to hobble it along 🙂

berserkerplanet · ‎04-26-2016

Yep, sorry, I was talking about the print page, but the same goes for the actual listing page: no troubles with printing that completely like you described.
Just now, I tried several listings (long ones, short ones, with fixed sized pictures in it, etc)... no troubles, except that I sometimes need to set the zoom level relativly small to see all of it (as in: some stuff gets cuts off on the right hand side of the page).

No apologies needed. Terminology is not set in stone here and we needed to literally get on the same page.

This is interesting, since the handful of tests I ran produced the print failure for me in even FF40 (from my perspective, based on my samples, ALL Firefoxen have the problem. Unfortunately I'm not in the mood to grab FF45 and check it out right now)

The right side cutoff issue is there for me too. I slapped a bandaid on it a while ago with some "not quite right, but mostly sortof gets the job done for now" CSS print formatting via Stylish:

/* MEDIA PRINT fixups */
/*----------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Tweak item description widths - they're in an iframe     */
/* sort of fixes text being cutoff on right when printing.  */
/* Can't mix @media w/ @moz-doc domain restrictors so rule  */
/* must unfortunately be global. Selector specificity       */
/* should take care of that creating any problems elsewhere */

 /* This part scales the description block width for printing */
 @media print {
  html>body>table>tbody>tr>td>div#ds_div {width:85% !important;}

 /**/experimental 
 /*This part was some playing around with trying to adjust the       */
 /*description block to print fully with cutting off at 1 page and   */
 /*pretty much is not working                                        */

 /*Long listing page description frames get cutoff when printing 3/13/16*/
 /*selector points at the html>body>div... chain under the iframe       */

  html>body>div>div#BottomPanelDF>div#BottomPanel>div.tabbable>
   div.tab-content-m>div.tab-pane>div>div>div#desc_div {
    width:50% !important;
    XXheight:auto !important;
    overflow:visible !important;
    display:inline !important;
    DIAGcolor:red !important;
    DIAGdisplay:none !important;
   }/**/experimental
 }
/*-----------------------------------------*/

The above was a quick fix that I haven't gotten back to playing with yet. Everything in the experimental block can be omitted or disabled as it mostly just doesn't do anything useful at this time. Note that I disable things by sticking XX or DIAG as eyecatchers onto the selectors, CSS rules, and @moz-doc domain/url scope rules in other CSS which makes those things not match anything - it works for because I use an old version of the Stylish addon (ver 1.2.2) with Firefox v3.6.24 and that older version doesn't complain about invalid rules. Newer versions of Stylish will throw errors IIRC.

Can you give an example of such items you have problems with? Because I'm unable to reproduce the kind of faults you experience with any item I tried.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/361542841532

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272213521557

Both long descriptions and cutoff at bottom.

I do use the latest Firefox version (45.0.2) though, although a bit reluctantly because of their new addon policy.

Haven't looked into latest addon issues, but have noted that addon signing started a while back. Initially caused me some trouble since even some older addons are signed now, and my older Firefox versions won't install them. Easy enough to fix though since I don't directly install addons, but instead download and archive the xpis. Use 7 zip as an xpi manager, double click the xpi, highlight the META-INF folder in the xpi, hit delete, confirm. close 7-zip, and the addon is now unsigned.

Note: I have never noticed any info missing on the print page compared to the actual listing page though (if you tick all the boxes on top of the print page).
Can you also give an example item? As I'm interersted to see what is actually missing... To make sure I didn't miss out on some of my current saved/archived listings.

Note that I'm mostly coming at this as a seller who wants to document everything just in case of an issue (especially if a PayPal dispute problem or chargeback 179 days from now after I have forgotten everything and little if anything is still avail online), but also as a buyer for similar reasons (it's good to have all the facts if it ever becomes necessary to engage with a seller for non-performance of some sort).

The summary page version doesn't show:

# of page views
Buyer ID
Listing duration
Listing start time or date
Listing end time (although date is there)
Number of auction bids
Item condition
Item condition seller notes
Number Avail/Sold if Multiple Quantity (MQ) lisiting.

Those are things I noticed. Additionally, one never knows if eBay is going to change it and start leaving some little thing off of the summary page in their tinkering, so I prefer to have a snapshot of the actual listing page as seen by me as a buyer or seen by my buyers.

Those little bits of info can become important if dealing with a SNAD or INR issue down the road as a buyer or seller, trying to line up ducks if needing to respond to a buyer asking where their thing is (could help with deciding tone and content of a response if I know that item was purchased at 11:55pm on a Friday night when they are moaning about it now being there Tuesday morning, etc), or if a SNAD type issue, having hardcopy of the listing showing that I had mentioned "a scratch on the back" in the seller note shown at the top of the listing but not shown on the summary page)

cherylbabbe · ‎05-15-2016

I have been displeased it was missing and have need to save a pdf-file of purchases. I valued being able to print out the lisiting, sales info AND all the photos from the description.

PLEASE, take my 1,001 vote to restore this. I would welcome a reply I spent 18 minutes on the site and read four threads -- I am clearly NOT alone.

Long time purchaser, long time support, please....bring it back!

CHeryl LYnn

greatlandergal · ‎05-20-2016

I don't see that in my purchased item screen. How do i find that option? I am sick of trying to print the listing of items i'm interested in and items that I've purchased and instead get all that other **bleep** or get 3 of the vertical page because of adds on the left side of the screen. Al buyers, esp we collectors prefer to document purchase w/ a copy of listing info. Com on ebay, make this easy for us, we certainlt buy enought stuff 4 you to have this "print listing" made easy resolved by now Cathy

@speedracer1 wrote:

Yes !! My hats off to your daughter. That is the solution. Thank You and your daughter SO much !

Problem Solved

berserkerplanet · ‎06-09-2016

At least for me, the previous method to navigate from an item listing page to a printable "purchased item" page is broken as of the last few days (see the previous posts in this thread with the old bookmarklets and discussion of the pages).

eBay changed something and broke the old method. New path is from order details page to purchased item page.

Here's a bookmarklet to use the new approach (copy and paste it to your browser bookmark toolbar or folder):

javascript&colon;if(location.href.substring(0,41) == 'http://vod.ebay.com/vod/FetchOrderDetails/'){window.location.href='http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&view=all'+window.location.href.match(/\&itemid=[0-9]*[^\&]/i)[0].replace("id","")+window.location.href.match(/\&transid=[0-9]*[^\&]/i)[0].replace("rans","");}

After the above is pasted into the bookmark location box, replace the &colon; with a plain old : (a colon character) before saving the bookmarklet (quirk of the forum software)

To use it, one must begin on an order details page with a URL of the basic form:

http://vod.ebay.com/vod/FetchOrderDetails?cartid=123412341234
&carttype=service&itemid=123412341234&purchaseorderid=123412341234
&transid=1234123412341&hc=1

There may be further query parameters tacked on the end, the order may not be same as shown, some parameters shown may not be present, but generally needs to be a page with a url that begins with

http://vod.ebay.com/vod/FetchOrderDetails?

and has "itemid" and "transid" query parameters present, since those two parameters are what we use to build the new url.

When the bookmarklet is invoked while on the order details page, it checks that it is indeed an order details page, grabs the "itemid" and "transid" parameters from that page's url, massages them into "item" and "tid" parameters, tacks them onto a new base url to create a url of the form

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&view=all
&item=123412341234&tid=1223123412341

and loads the new printable "Purchased item" page (the one with all the photos, etc)

kurtrobaer · ‎06-10-2016

@berserkerplanet wrote:
At least for me, the previous method to navigate from an item listing page to a printable "purchased item" page is broken as of the last few days (see the previous posts in this thread with the old bookmarklets and discussion of the pages).

eBay changed something and broke the old method. New path is from order details page to purchased item page.

[SNIPPED]

Thanks for notifying about the change!!

Stupid eBay *sigh*

I too see the change here, seems to be a global; other language domains have the same change so it seems.

The change is a change in the 'updateURL' parameter url found in the source of an item page. This parameter was used in the bookmarklet script to create the proper print page URL by simply adding some extra parameters, but that no longer works since this the new 'updateURL' url points to another subdomain (www.ebay.* instead of cgi.ebay.*).

So, in order to make it work again the bookmarklet previously mentionned needs to be changed a little bit to:

javascript&colon;window.location.href=JSON.parse('"http://cgi.'+document.documentElement.textContent.match(/"updateURL":".*?(ebay.*?)"/)[1]+'&viewItem&rt=nc&print=all"')

After the above is pasted into the bookmark location box, replace the &colon; with a plain old : (a colon character) before saving the bookmarklet (quirk of the forum software).

With this bookmarklet you don't need to go to an order page, nor purchased item page, nor other long and indirect method. Moreover all those methods are not always available and possible! eg: when you want the print page from an item which you haven't purchased, etc etc.

Simply add the above bookmarklet to a button on your navigation/favorites bar and hit it when you are on an item page to go directly to the print page again. It works (for now) no matter if the item is new, sold, not sold, purchased, cancelled, not won, etc....

rockie67 · ‎08-03-2016

I stumbled upon an easy solution, by accident, that's been working for me. Copy and paste this url into the browser and type the item number over the XXXX. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&item=XXXX

Go down to the description tab and look/scroll to the right. You'll see the Print link which brings you to the old style print page where you can choose what will be included in your printing. 🙂 I only tested in Chrome.

I went ahead and tested on old IE version that's no longer supported and it worked as well.

I agree, Ebay needs to make this easier. I warn everyone to take advantage of this while it works!

2015kabangbiz · ‎09-11-2016

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!!!

Drives me nuts that ebay keeps changing things - as soon as I nail down a good procedure for record keeping something changes and I spend way too much time trying to figure out how to keep my records consistent.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your discovery!

richyt · ‎12-26-2016

Gread Deal, Rockie.

I have been working on trying to get an automated download of item descriptions for when I buy things. Because it's automated, I want it to be able to get the page details without having to log in but I also want to not have all the advertising.

The reason for this is I often purchase quite technical items and have been bitten by not being able to get the information that was in the description. Also, sometimes if I want to reorder something, critical information was on the page and not in the title.

This still gets a little more information than I really want but I think that's stuff that's included by the seller.

Hmm. I just found out that if you use a tool like wget, you don't get all the ebay included advertising stuff. Here's an example of the command line I'm using

wget -E -H -k -K -p "http://www.ebay.com/itm/331951779367"

If I go to the same URL with the browser, I get all the ebay extra stuff but it looks like I'm in business for what I'm trying to do.

By the way, offtopic but does anybody else think it's crazy that ebay will stop linking to an items page from your "won items" list after 90 days even if that item is still findable by putting in the item id?

kurtrobaer · ‎12-26-2016

Hi richyt,

Thanks for posting, but that is no solution, nor is it on-topic of the issue here. What you do with that wget command is simply downloading the item page. This has got nothing to do with the print-page.

The issue in this thread is about the print page which you can not get to directly anymore, since years.

On your problem: you do not need any advertisement from ebay to get the item descriptions. Advertisements are just that: ads for other items. What you need for that "technical info" is the item description which is simply part of the page. However, sometimes the seller includes this information in a html frame, which is not part of the main DOM page and needs to be downloaded seperatly. Normally your browser will do that for you, but by using external automated processes you need to take care of that yourself. Wget can do that for you, but be EXTREMELY carefull with that, I see you use option -H in your wget command line! I very strongly suggest to first read https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html#Spanning-Hosts

Also note if you want all that but without the ads, I do suggest to wget the print-page. Although you will have the same problems/limitations as described above in regards to external sources for images and text, you wont have as much advertisements and other **bleep** (and all the massive overhead it brings with it).

😉